Marketing For Dummies - Softcover

Marketing is the most important thing that you do in business today, even if your job title doesn't have the word marketing in it. That is because marketing, in all its varied forms, is concerned with things like attracting customers, and Getting them to buy your product Making sure that they are happy with their purchases Persuading them to come back for more What could be more important? Ever try to run a business without customers? Marketing encompasses several specialized fields -- from advertising to public relations, from selling to strategy, from database management to packaging and product design. How can you possibly be an expert at even half of these tasks? But at some point, anyone who wears a marketing hat has to handle problems in these areas and more. Marketing For Dummies shows you how. While this guide delves deep into the classic four components of marketing -- product, price, placement, and promotions -- it reaches beyond the basics of how to design a simple marketing program and gives you insight into Creating a compelling Internet strategy Succeeding at trade shows Producing interesting labeling, billboards, and print ads Understanding point-of-purchase advertising Sure, marketing can be a great deal of fun -- it is, after all, a rare aspect of business where creativity is not only tolerated but essential to success. Yet in the long run, marketing is all about the bottom line. And Marketing For Dummies has a great many solutions of use to anyone who faces the challenge of finding and satisfying customers.

Alex Hiam (pronounced High-am") has had marketing in his blood for many years. He has worked in the marketing departments of a Silicon Valley computer startup and a Fortune 100 company and helps countless clients write marketing plans and solve marketing and sales problems in industries as varied as restaurants, sporting goods, financial services, health care, transportation, and industrial chemicals.Alex has also investigated customer service and product quality issues for The Conference Board and its all-star membership list, including companies like Corning, Ford, Whirlpool, IBM, and Procter & Gamble.Alex's credentials include degrees from Harvard and U.C. Berkeley (where he earned an MBA in marketing and strategy), and he taught marketing and advertising as a visiting professor at the School of Management of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for many semesters. He has authored more than a dozen books on marketing and related topics, including The Portable MBA in Marketing (a Fortune Book Club main selection), The Vest-Pocket Marketer, The Entrepreneur's Complete Sourcebook, The Vest-Pocket CEO, and Closing the Quality Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies.Alex is currently facing a new marketing challenge in his own work. He founded Human Interactions Asessment & Management, a firm specializing in innovative products for trainers, consultants, human resource managers, and marketing/sales managers, and he is now working to build its product lines and establish it as a leading brand. The first two products are already out: The Portable Conference on Change Management and a training and planning line for negotiators called Flex Style Negotiation (both distributed by HRD Press of Pelham, Mass.). He intends to use Marketing For Dummies extensively as he undertakes this new career challenge!